Expert Blogs
One of the problems pinhole photographers (like me) have is getting exposures. When you use a camera that has f/108 as its fixed setting, it gets a bit difficult when you have to calculate exposures. Using your iPhone, with ExifWizard, you can now check out exposures quickly. Take a picture with your iPhone, open up ExifWizard and you'll see the exposure. Once you have the exposure, you can calibrate the exposure for your pinhole camera. It takes some math, but the iPhone makes it much easier.
Many years ago, when I was a wedding photographer, I used a Hasselblad. I loved the 2 1/4 x 2 1/4 square format. Although many iPhone apps allow you to create a square image, I finally found one that does exactly what I want it to do. As the developer puts it, "If you find other camera apps over-fussy (and their photographs annoyingly oblong) then 6x6 is the app for you." It allows you to create color or black & white pictures. You shoot like you were using the old Hasselblads. It's like going home again. Gotta go...I'm taking pictures with the 6x6 app.
Although there seem to be a zillion iPhone photography Apps (with the number growing everyday) there's still one App that I think teachers can use on a daily basis...the Camera. As one who spent 28 years as a classroom teacher and an additional 6 as a teacher trainer, I know how handy a camera can be. Since the iPhone is with you all the time, it becomes even more important as a camera. Here are a four things I'd do if I were still in the classroom...with my iPhone and Camera.
When you combine simple with black and white you get a bunch of dots. When the dots are put together, you've got an interesting image using Dot Sketch. As soon as I saw the description of the app I thought of the sunflower. I hoped that it would capture the sunflower's elegant simplicity. I think it worked. How about you?
My taste doesn't usually change. In photography, I usually like straight images. As I look at more and more iPhone Apps, my taste may be changing, just a little. More Apps are popping up that appeal to me. Paper Camera is one of them. To test it out, I figured that a very 'plain' image would be best. I went out into the yard and took a picture of a single sunflower. Nothing great to look at...but nice. After a few seconds with Paper Camera this is what I got. Far better than the original with some character. The flower also pops out much more than in the original.
Several weeks ago I heard about a book that was coming out about photo editing techniques with an iPhone. It arrived! iPhone Obsessed by Dan Marcolina literally arrived a few minutes ago. I've only had a chance to glance through it. It gives you step-by-step directions on how to use many iPhone photo apps for very interesting results. Incidentally, the very interesting is an understatement. They are great! I'm looking forward to going through the book in detail and reporting on some of the techniques. It's definitely worth getting!
I usually like straight unaltered pictures. And then came Grungetastic for the iPhone. With Grungetastic you can make some really grungey effects. The effects go so far that I actually am enjoying experimenting with it. If you want to write a thriller, it seems like a grunged picture would go well. It may not be for everyone, but it might be for you. For a buck, it's worth the risk.
iPhones greet us every time we turn them on. Your greeting is the wallpaper that you select to see. You can look for interesting photos online and add it to your iPhone or you can use one of your own photos. I prefer to use one of my own because it always makes me smile. Here's how my iPhone greets me. How does your iPhone greet you?
Although I don't have any ideas about the which came first between the chicken and the egg, I do have some ideas about which is better...color or black-and-white when it comes to photography. In the olden days when I was a little boy, there was no choice. Black-and-White film was available. You took your pictures and then took the film to the local drug store. About a week or two later, you'd return to the drug store and pick up your rather small black-and-white prints. Once we started to use color film, we had a choice, color or black-and-white. However, if you started with color negatives, you'd probably have to print the black-and-white version yourself, or send it to a photo lab.
It's time, I think, for Twitter to acquire Instagram or Picplz and Twitpic. Twitpic lets you upload pictures (from any digital source) onto Twitter. Instagram and Picplz let you take pictures with an iPhone, alter them, and then upload them to Twitter (among other places). It's time for Twitter to make some acquisitions to smooth out the process so that when I (we) use Twitter (the app) we can take pictures with our iPhones, alter them in whatever way we want, and upload them all within the same app. Come on Twitter, make my day! Please. :)
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